John Ellegood, an NRC inspector, looks at Palisades' auxiliary feed water system in 2012. MLive file

KALAMAZOO, MI – The director of nuclear safety for the Union of Concerned
Scientists remains critical of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's handling of
a leak last summer at Palisades Nuclear Plant.

David Lochbaum was in Kalamazoo Thursday to give a talk
at Western Michigan University before an appearance at the Beach Haven event center
in South Haven at 7 p.m.

"The NRC does a good job of setting the safety bar at the
right height. You then have to make sure people meet it; you don't let people
limbo beneath it," said Lochbaum in an interview Thursday.

The leak at Palisades was a subject of the Union of Concerned
Scientists' March report, "Tolerating the Intolerable."

Over a 30-day period, up to 10,000 gallons of radioactive
water leaked from the containment vessel. The water was contained and did not
pose a safety risk to the public, the NRC has said.

At the time the leak started, its source was unknown. When it increased to 0.3 gallons per minute, which is below the one
gallon per minute limit allowed by regulations, Palisades shut down the plant to discover where
the leak was coming from.

At that point, workers discovered it was a
pressure-boundary leak. In the case of that type of leak, NRC rules mandate that a plant be shut down after six
hours. The NRC launched an investigation of the incident, which is still ongoing.

Lochbaum said that taking 30 days to discover the source of the leak was unacceptable and the UCS would like to see a fine issued to
Entergy Corp., which owns and operates Palisades.

"They violated federal law for 29 days without sanction,"
said Lochbaum, who said he would like to see the NRC enforce violations more
rigorously to send a message to plant operators. "The leak itself has been fixed. Both the company's and the NRC's
response is what concerns us."

Palisades spokeswoman Lindsay Rose, in a written statement Thursday, said the plant responded appropriately to the leak.

"We have an unrelenting commitment and focus on operating Palisades at the highest levels of safety and reliability. That’s why we shut the plant down last August as a proactive, conservative measure to identify the source of the leak," Rose wrote.

"Following the plant shutdown, we had the ability to access the control rod drive area. We were able to determine that the source of the leakage was inside an area of a control rod drive mechanism stalk, inside of the containment building.

"The issue posed no challenge to the health and safety of the public or our workers."

In terms of sanctions, the NRC is only allowed to issue
fines in specific instances, said Viktoria Mitlyng, a spokeswoman for the NRC.
Those include: a company willfully providing incorrect or false information to
the NRC, cases of discrimination and cases of excessive exposure to radiation.
None of those instances apply to the leak at Palisades, Mitlyng said.

While Lochbaum would like to see the NRC take a more aggressive
role in enforcing violations, he said, "the NRC does way more than good than bad.
We don't need to scrap the NRC. They're doing the right job; they just need to
do that more often."

Lochbaum also said he is not in the camp calling for the
closure of the 46-year-old Palisades. But he is concerned that Entergy is not
as aggressive in pursuing safety issues as other owners of nuclear plants, such
as Dominion and the South Texas Project.

"An aging plant poses more and more challenges," said
Lochbaum, who called last summer's leak a symptom of aging. "We're not saying
take away the keys."

But, he added, Palisades has had more than the average
number of leaks, suggesting that the "post-event maintenance is not as
effective as other plants."

"They've
had some events that have made it too easy for their critics," said Lochbaum,
who worked at nuclear power plants for 17 years and for the NRC for one. "Everybody
has events, but not at the frequency Entergy is having."

Rose said in her statement that Palisades has demonstrated it is safe. "Last
week the NRC held their annual end-of-cycle meeting and they confirmed that
Palisades operated safely in 2012," she said. "The
NRC chairman recently testified before Congress that the steps we're taking are
moving Palisades in 'a very positive direction.' "

"Look at two people who buy identical cars off the lot on
the same day. If the first owner has done the preventive maintenance, that car's
likely to be in better shape than the car where the owner has only changed the radio station,"
said Lochbaum.

Leaks are not unique to Palisades, which is located in
Covert Township, nor was last summer's leak the most severe example, Lochbaum
said. That dubious honor belongs to the Davis-Besse plant in Ohio, which had a leak
that lasted six years. In 2002, workers discovered that the radioactive water
had corroded the walls of the containment vessel, leading to a six-inch hole. Thankfully,
the corrosion, discovered in 2002, did not lead to an accident, but it was
considered a serious safety incident.

In that instance, the company provided false information to
the NRC, said Mitlyng. The plant's owners were fined $5 million by the NRC -- the
largest fine ever imposed by the agency. The company paid another $28 million
in fines to the U.S. Department of Justice, which launched a criminal
investigation, and the plant was shut down for two years.

While there has been concern in recent months about the
potential for pressurized thermal shock at Palisades, which the NRC has
characterized as a remote possibility, Lochbaum said that the UCS is more
concerned about fire shock.

Palisades is among 50 plants nationwide, which also include the D.C. Cook plant in Bridgman, that have not yet transitioned to the NRC's
revised fire safety regulations, which were put in place in 2004, he said.

"Fire hazard is 50 percent of the risk. It's equal to all
other threats combined. That assumes you meet the rules," said Lochbaum. "It's
almost nine years after those rules, and we're still not there ... The NRC should
not be enabling that heightened risk."

When asked about the revised fire safety rules, Mitlyng said that Palisades is one of the plants that will be transitioning to
the 2004 regulations.

"All plants meet the
requirements placed on them by the NRC for fire safety, either by strict
adherence to our regulations or by demonstrating to NRC's satisfaction where
that is not feasible that they can provide an equivalent level of protection
through an alternate approach," she said, adding that the NRC conducts
inspections to ensure the protective measures are in place and effective. "All
existing plants are required to ensure plants are protected from fire, and all
new plants will be held to the standards set in the new risk-driven program,
NFPA 805 (National Fire Protection Association standard 805)," said Mitlyng.

Rose said Palisades is working toward updating fire safety guidelines.

"We are participating in a voluntary program to take steps to make an
already safe nuclear facility even safer by transitioning to the NRC’s
fire safety guidelines that were issued in 2004," Rose said. "We submitted an
amendment request to the NRC in December of 2012 and are moving forward
in the transition process."

Yvonne Zipp is a reporter for MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette. You can reach her at yzipp@mlive.com or 269-365-8639.